Monday, November 10, 2014

Captain E. D.
Comings floats a big plan for carrying passengers to the 1893 World’s Columbian
Exposition by way of the lake.Projecting the ability to transport 17,000 passengers an hour between
the city and Jackson Park, Captain Comings announced the formation of a company that would
build or lease five excursion stammers, each holding 3,500 passengers and capable of serving an onboard meal. The plan also included the vision of building a
“Coney Island” somewhere on the lake not more than 20 miles from the city, to
which the great steamers could transport passengers after the fair closed in
the fall of 1893.

Columbian Exposition Pier in foreground (wikimeida.org)

November 11, 1890

Constable Robert
Crawford and a friend drive off the opened Halsted Street bridge and plunge
into the Chicago River at 12:30 a.m.Approaching the abutment at the crossing, the constable apparently
failed to notice that the swing bridge had rotated on its turntable, and horse,
buggy and the two occupants soared into the night air.The companion jumped and landed on solid
ground.Mr. Crawford went into the
river, striking a piling as he fell, and became entangled in the buggy’s
harness, which kept him from hitting the water.Nearby sailors heard his cries
for help and came to the rescue.The
horse never reappeared.

November 12, 1863

“It smells rank to
high heaven,” The Chicago Tribune editorializes about the condition of the
Chicago River, “and to every man and woman’s olfactories which approach within
ninety rods of its redolent shores.What
is to be done with it?It is a question,
the solution of which must be reached at once.Delays are dangerous, and growing more so every day.Some remedy must be applied.Either the cause of its present condition
must be abated, or some new and untried experiment must remedy the evil.”

November 13, 1951

An 8.5 million
dollar, two-level garage under Michigan Avenue and Grant Park, extending from
Randolph Street to Monroe is proposed by the park board.Planned to hold 2,567 cars, the structure
would be financed with revenue bonds. Ralph H. Burke, city airport engineer and
former chief engineer of the park district, said that first construction would
begin under the park with a temporary roadway acting as a detour while Michigan
Avenue entrance and exit ramps were constructed.

November 14, 2010

The 116-year-old
Francis J. Dewes mansion in Lincoln Park goes on the market for $9.9
million.With 16 rooms and eight
working fireplaces, the mansion was listed on the National Register of
Historic Places.Dewes came to Chicago
in 1868 from Prussia and served as a bookkeeper at established breweries in the
city before founding his own company in 1882. A tour of the mansion can be found here and here and here.

November 15, 1954

The will of Edward
H. Bennett, designer of Buckingham Fountain and the bridge at Michigan Avenue
and the Chicago River, reveals an estate of $325,000.The will leaves $250,000 to his widow, Olive;
$3,000 each to two sisters, and architectural books, documents, jewelry and
seven valuable portraits to his son, Edward H. Bennett, Jr.

November 16, 1902

Chicago football
led to misery just as much a century ago as it does today.At 2:30 a.m. at Emil Devic’s bar at 1610
Wabash a group of college students were celebrating a football victory when
some glasses fell to the floor and broke.John Hoback, the bar tender brought the glasses back to the bar where
Joseph Ryan, the establishment’s manager, insisted he return to the table and
charge the customers for the damage. Mr.
Hoback, apparently taking objection to the tone in which the demand was made, announced that he was quitting, and Mr. Ryan argued with him, finally firing
him.At that point he bar tender claimed that Ryan
started over the bar for him.“When Ryan
rushed at me I knew he would kill me if he could,” said Hoback, “so I drew my
revolver and shot him.”Ryan died of two
shots to the head.

November 17, 1891

William Ordway
Partridge, the sculptor of the statue of Shakespeare in Lincoln Park, leaves
the Leland Hotel to return to his studio in the Boulevard Montpanasse in
Paris.Before leaving the sculptor said,
“Your Art Institute has the nucleus of what can easily be made one of the best
all around schools of art in the world, with possibly Kensington as its only
superior.Then, too, I consider Chicago
admirable for the absolute independence of its taste in art.The East adopts or admires a thing because
Europe has stamped it with approval.Chicago does so because Chicagoans feel it to be art, no matter whether
others have praised or have even seen it.”

Saturday, November 8, 2014

1860's Chicago River, looking west toward Wells Street from Clark(History of Chicago 1857 until the Fire)

TERRIBLE CALAMITY.

So screamed the
headline of the Chicago Tribune on November 9, 1861.The article that followed described the
explosion of the steamship Globe, tied up at a Wells Street dock, a disaster
that claimed the lives of 15 people.The
ship, one of the largest at work on the Great Lakes, had come into port from
Buffalo at about 4:00 a.m. on November 8.As it prepared to unload freight later in the morning, an explosion of
“fearful violence” occurred, “tearing the steamer in pieces with a large
destruction of property.”[Chicago
Tribune, November 9, 1861]

The tremendous
sound of the explosion reverberated throughout the city, and people rushed to the
docks to witness the spectacle.The
ship, torn apart for two-thirds of her length, sank almost immediately with
about 20 feet of her upper works still visible.It was immediately clear that the death toll would be large.

Among the dead were
several individuals who were as much victims of fate as of the explosion of the
steamer.James R. Hobby, 25-years-old, was assisting a clerk who had gone on board to check on a shipment for his
employer.The clerk had returned to the
office moments earlier, leaving James to finish the work.

Mary Golding,
15-years-old, was on the dock with her ten-year-old sister, picking up apples
that had fallen from broken barrels, part of the ship’s cargo.Mary died.Her sister, who was less than ten feet away, was uninjured and ran home
to their parents’ home at Franklin and Kinzie, screaming that “somebody had fired a cannon
at Mary and killed her.”

Patrick Donahoe was
killed by a large oak beam as he stood in front of a saloon on Wells
Street.A father and two daughters who
had booked passage on the ship and left it after it docked,returned to
pick up their luggage just before the disaster.The father and one
of his daughters died.The other
daughter survived.

The explosion of
the steamer was of such force that huge pieces of the vessel were hurled in all
directions, prompting incredible stories of near-misses.

Nelson Luddington
was driving his buggy along Wells Street when a stick of firewood from the
Globe completely destroyed the buggy.A
200-pound piece of chain was hurled through the window of a produce dealer,
slamming into a heavy iron safe, which prevented it from traveling through the
wall into the adjoining office where several people were at work.

A 200-pound deck
beam rocketed through the fourth floor window of a business on Lake Street,
near Wells.A large piece of chain,
about five feet long, fell through the roof and ceiling of the Merchants’
Police Station on Wells Street and passed between two men as they lay sleeping
after doing night service.

Captain Amos Pratt
had left the boat at about 7:30 a.m., about two hours before the
explosion.His belief was that after the
boat docked, water was drawn down in one of the boilers while the other boiler
was keep at a low pressure for moving the boat and hoisting freight.He surmised that explosion was caused by
“carelessness on the part of someone,” most probably by failure to check the
system adequately before introducing cold river water into a red-hot boiler
that had no water in it.The boilers had
passed an inspection by United States officials the previous May in Buffalo.

The Globe lay where it sank until April of 1862 as the parties involved in its removal fought
over who would pay for the operation. In February of that year the Chicago City
Attorney ruled that the city was most certainly not responsible for cleaning up
the wreckage.By March the boat’s owners
had hired contractor Martin Quigley to clean up the wreckage, paying him
$1,500 and any material that he could salvage.In that process another crewmember’s body, believed to be the fireman’s,
was found on March 18, 1861.

In a short
two-sentence blurb on April 3 The Tribune reported that three tugboats were
towing the hulk toward Miller & Hook’s dry dock on the north branch of the
river.“It is good riddance to our
river,” the paper concluded.

The accident, as
horrible as it was, could have been a lot worse.“. . . it is a hair-breadth escape for
hundreds,” The Tribune observed, “when with a violence an explosion of
gunpowder could scarcely parallel, a boiler is thus blown up in the very heart
of a busy city, and sends its fearful missiles whirling hundreds of feet through
the air to light at random in our streets.Reviewing the disaster it is almost miraculous, to see how few lives
were lost, and amid all the sorrow, this is an abundant cause for
congratulation.” [Chicago Tribune, November 10, 1861]

Thursday, November 6, 2014

A big kerfuffle on
this day, November 6, of 1890 as the city turned out for the ceremony to lay
the cornerstone for the building that would rise at the corner of State Street
and Randolph.The Masonic Temple, it was
promised, would be the tallest building in the world when it was completed.

As dignitaries
gathered the box to be placed inside the cornerstone was prepared.The stone which was to seal the box within
the base of the building stood ready, inscribed with these words, “Erected by
the Masonic Fraternity, A. D. 1890, Temple Association.”[Chicago
Tribune, November 7, 1890]The paper
pointed out that such heavy stones were purely decorative, observing that “In
this structure, a type of the American school of architecture, the masonry is
only to protect the real supports of the building steel beams.”

Music blared as
horses “prancing with military spirit” passed by.The parade was a dazzling display as “Men
bearing glittering swords came by, their snowy plumes shining against the black
background of the Knights’ dress.There
were red crosses, black crosses, and double-barred crosses, and every uniform
as neat as wax, each uniformed man wearing spotless gloves.Magnificently-embroidered banners with
knightly crests then floated on the breeze.”

The streets were
packed.Windows were filled with
spectators.The roofs along State Street
were lined with hundreds of people.

As Chicago began to
prepare for the great World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, an event that
citizens saw as placing Chicago among the great cities of the world, the Masonic
Temple would strengthen that notion.Towering 275 feet above State Street, this would be the tallest building
in the world.“All of the arts of the
present century will be employed to embellish its interior and give it an
attractive exterior, and no expense will be spared to make it one of the most,
if not the most complete structure in existence,” wrote The Tribune.

One of the many interior meeting rooms(Chicago Daily News Archives - Library of Congress)

In fact, it was
anticipated that the new building would cost $2,000,000, close to 52 million
dollars these days.The entrance, 42
feet high and 28 feet wide, led into “a rotunda having an area of 3,700 square
feet and open to the extreme height of the building, finished up to the
275-foot roof with plate-glass and white polished marble.”[Chicago Tribune, November 7, 1890]

In addition to
several hundred offices, there were over 100 Masonic lodge rooms, some of them
having a capacity of over 1,000 people.Each floor had a 12-foot central corridor with offices and stores lining
each side, half looking through windows to the street, the other half
overlooking the central atrium.

Fifty thousand safe
deposit boxes were placed in the basement of the building, providing for annual
income of $125,000. The Bankers’ National Bank with a capitalized valuation of
$1,000,000 agreed to a ten-year lease on the corner space on the ground floor
of the building for $160,000.

There were 17
elevators, capable of carrying 70,000 passengers a day.The Tribune brayed, “Even that of the great
Eiffel tower of Paris and the World Building of New York will have to yield the
honor to Chicago in this respect.” [Chicago Tribune, March 14, 1892]

Hydraulically
operated, the pumping apparatus used to run them was capable of “supplying
water every day to a town of 60,000 inhabitants.”The elevator cables alone would span a
distance of 16 miles.Rough calculations
suggested that the elevators would travel 123,136 miles a year or “nearly five
times around the earth.”

Three of the lifts
would be dedicated to ferrying people to the observatory at the top of the
building where a “beautiful pavilion garden will relieve the eye after the
grand panorama of the city and the surrounding lake and country scenery has
been viewed.”

The great building soon became a tragic memorial as less than three
months after the dedication the building’s genius architect, John Welborn Root, died suddenly after
“being seized with a severe chill” after a visit of architects from the east
coast, who had shared the preliminary plans for the 1893 fair at Root's house.

Although Mr. Root
was not a member of the order, the Masons gathered together to “join with our
citizens generally in the deep sorrow felt at the loss of this prominent
citizen, whose personal worth and professional skill brought him in close
contact with this ancient fraternity, as the designer of the great Masonic
Temple, the erection of which had so auspiciously begun under the direction of
his master mind.” [Chicago Tribune, January 16, 1891]

View of Randolph and State from the roof(Chicago Daily New Archive - Library of Congress)

By March 1, 1891
the foundation for the great building was complete with “piers completed,
cap-stones on, and the base of the steel columns set.” [Chicago Tribune, March
1, 1891] Workers had toiled in three
shifts around the clock to complete this section of the project, and that was
the first part of a schedule that moved forward at breakneck speed.

There were
penalties for any contractor who could not meet the ambitious schedule.The contractor responsible for erecting the
steel frame of the building was required to take out a $100,000 bond, payable
if the company did not meet the deadline for having that phase of the project
finished.There was a $500 a day penalty
for each floor not completed on time.The steel contractor was to forfeit $1,000 a day for each day a
scheduled delivery was late.

As a result, exactly one
year later, on November 6, 1891, the capstone was laid at the top of the
19-story, marking the practical completion of the great structure.“In one year’s time the big building has
progressed from the cornerstone to the capstone, and it stands today a towering
monument to the master minds that conceived it and to that fraternity, old
almost as history itself, which has caused it to be built,” The Tribune
reported.[Chicago Tribune, November 7, 1891]

“A grander or more
brilliant procession of Masons never marched along the streets in Chicago,”
wrote The Tribune.More than 500
uniformed knights were in the line, their white plumes waving and their highly
burnished swords clanking as they tramped along.”The procession was led by two platoons of
policemen who tried to clear a path through the spectators who had lined the
route. 1,550 more men, representing the Masonic lodges of the city, followed the
contingent of dignitaries.

A rope extending from
a crane at the highest point of the front wall of the building was attached to
the capstone, which lay on a table covered with the American flag.“It was so small and plain-looking that it
was dwarfed by the mighty Temple,” wrote The Tribune.

By June 1, 1892 the
conservatory in the building opened 300 feet above State Street.Although it was a foggy day when the opening
reception was held inside the space, optimism ran high.One of the directors of the Masonic
Fraternity Temple Association, Amos Grannis, observed, “During the World’s Fair
we expect the conservatory to become a popular resort . . . The dancing floor
has a surface of 10,000 square feet and the conservatory will make a splendid
place for parties.In clear weather the
Michigan shore can be seen, and a splendid view of Chicago, including the
World’s Fair, is one of the advantages offered.” [Chicago Tribune, June 2,
1892]

Ah, if only things
had worked out as well as they were planned.Two weeks after the conservatory opened, the complaints of the
building’s tenants were so many and so vigorous that The Tribune observed that the “nice linen-woven paper” used to
record them was too thin to carry their weight.

There were
complaints about the elevators.There
were no signs to show which elevators went where and “the men who operate the
cages wear such an air of lofty superiority that the humble passenger hardly
dares to ask a question, fearing a rebuke for being so presumptuous.”[Chicago Tribune, June 19, 1892]

E. D. Neff in Room
1505 stated that “the supply of electricity has been so irregular as to make it
of no value to me.For the first twenty
days in May it was impossible to do business for the reason that the current
was shut off so frequently.”

Dr. F. A. Stetson
stated that until May 20 the hallway in front of his office door was
“ornamented by a large mortar box, and the passageways were so dirty and full
of plaster that he could not put down carpets until June 1.”

An owner who had
leased space in the building for a music conservatory was told to “stop the playing
of musical instruments in his rooms.”A
gentleman who had leased a space to sell candy and soda water found that leases
had been given to other parties to sell candy in the building’s hallways.

The rental agent
(you’re not going to believe this), E. R. Bliss, was shown the list of
complaints and responded that he “was tired of the job,” that he had only been
drawn into it by the death of one of the other partners.

By the end of July
even the building’s crown jewel had lost its sparkle.The glass roof of the twentieth floor
conservatory and its small windows tucked under the eaves of the roof, combined
to send the temperature in the showplace to 112 degrees and the air "became so
hot and stifling for a time that the banks of ferns and other plants set about
the room grew brown and seared like a Kansas cornfield when a hot wind blows
over it.”[Chicago Tribune, July 27,
1892]

And there was the
smoke.The Tribune observed dryly, “The
Masonic Temple has entered the field against the tugs, the switch engines, and
other able-bodied and veteran smoke-producers only a few months ago. Yet so
steady and so voluminous has been its output that the others have been compelled
to acknowledge its superiority.”[Chicago Tribune, July 25, 1892]

A column at the building’s
entrance beckoned visitors to take a trip to the conservatory, “the highest
point of observation in the city.”The
Tribune declared, “The extent to which the Masonic Temple smokestack obscures
the view of the city is not dwelt upon in the advertisements of the
Temple.Certainly no other building does
more in that direction than the Temple.”

The smoking titan(Chicago Daily News Archive - Library of Congress)

The great building
stood until 1939 when it was demolished.Proposed construction of the State Street subway would have required
extensive and prohibitively expensive foundation modification.The
elevators never really lived up to their billing because the capacity of some of the spaces on the
upper floors would have required service that could not be delivered in
buildings that are being designed today.

But, my God, what a
building this was.Think about it –
within three short years, the tallest building on earth, a World’s Fair that
would attract 27.5 million people to the city, and an Art Institute worthy of
any city in the world.Chicago had become a city on the
make.

At the ceremony for
the laying of the building’s capstone on November 6, 1891, the Reverend Dr. H.
W. Thomas observed, “Men die, institutions live.When we are gone, when other feet shall walk
these streets a hundred or a thousand years hence, while the waters wash these
shores, till time is no more, may this temple stand for the glory of God, the
honor of the Masonry, and the good of man.”

Not quite a
thousand.A little less than half a
century.A really, really good one to
remember, though.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Big cities were
dangerous places as the twentieth century began.Maybe that is still true, but we can’t
imagine the daily onslaught of train fatalities, unfortunate falls beneath
streetcar wheels, poisonings, diseases and fires that besieged the average
citizen as the 1900’s began.

One event that clearly
shows the truth of that statement occurred on this date, November 5, of
1902.It happened in the brand new store
of Marshall Field when an elevator and its two passengers fell from the ninth
floor to the basement of the building.The 25-year-old elevator operator, Thomas Byrne, was killed in the
accident.His passenger, John Steiskal,
suffered injuries and was removed to the Presbyterian Hospital.

Harry G. Selfridge,
the manager of the store, was also injured as he was cut by falling glass as he
helped to clear away the wreckage.You
may recognize Mr. Selfridge’s name.He
worked his way up the ladder at Field’s and left in 1906 for London where he
spent an extraordinary sum to open a department store on the west end of Oxford
Street.

It was a dramatic
accident at Marshall Field’s as the entire building shook when the car landed,
and the sound of the crash reverberated throughout the interior of the
store.The car fell with such speed that
the counterweights were hurled through the roof of the building.That was unfortunate because much of the
cabling came back down the elevator shaft, and that seems to have been the
cause of young Mr. Byrne’s death.

Harry Selfridge

Said Mr. Selfridge,
“The cause of the accident is unknown to me, but is being investigated as
rapidly as possible.The car did not
fall precipitately, but gradually, comparatively, as shown by the safety
apparatus.Our employee would not have
been killed but for the fall of the cables.”

Just a cursory look
at newspaper accounts of 1902 show that elevator injuries and deaths occurred
with regularity with nearly one incident per month.I think that if I were living back in 1902, I
might be inclined to take the stairs.

Chicago Elevator Mishaps in
1902 – A Partial List

• January 11 –
Elevator falls in Chamber of Commerce Building, the third mishap in the same
building in a month, killing a workman.

• January 27 – Two
workmen escape death when an elevator falls at Openheim’s General Store at
Forty-Seventh and Ashland.

• March 10 – Mrs. Anna
Schneider is killed in a West Side Hospital elevator as she is being
transferred on a wheeled cart from one ward to another.

• April 14 –
16-year-old George Calbach is killed as he is caught between the weights of two
elevators while riding in a freight elevator at 128 Franklin Street.

• May 12 – Seven men
and two women escape from an elevator in the Marquette Building after it falls
three floors.

• May 15 – Joseph
Brown, a teamster, is injured as an elevator falls at 170 Clinton Street, the
second such mishap in a year.

• June 4 – A young
boy, identified, is killed in an elevator at 221 State Street.

• June 6 – An
elevator drops from the sixth story of the Warren Springer Building at 199
South Canal Street, injuring three.

• July 15 – Frank H.
Griswold, president of the Northwestern Storage Company, the Newberry Storage
and Warehouse Company, and the Griswold Storage and Tansfer Company is killed
by a falling elevator at 280 Michigan Avenue.

• July 28 –
14-year-old Tolif Buchkowski, is maimed as a he is wedged between a heavy
freight elevator and a stone wall.

• November 7 – L. D.
Johnson, a clerk, is crushed between an elevator cage and the shaft of the
Schlesinger & Mayer’s store.

• December 6 – Emil
Ryandorf, 17-years-old, has his skull fractured when he falls down an elevator
shaft at the Warren Springer Company, 231 South Canal Street.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

The old State Street bridge, destroyed by the Chicago fire in 1871(www.historicbridge.org)

Tonight Nik
Wallenda will be doing his high-wire daredevil thing, crossing the river
between State and Dearborn on a tightrope after walking from the east tower to
the west tower of Marina City . . . blindfolded.There will be plenty of exciting action – the
skies are clear, the wind has died down, and the city is pumped up.

There was plenty of
action at the State Street bridge on this date, November 2, in 1867 as two
assistant bridge tenders got into a tussle at 1:00 in the morning.“That a murder was not committed, was in no
way the fault of the combatants, for there was neither a lack of intent, nor
were the weapons employed impotent to produce such a result,” reported The Tribune.[Chicago
Tribune, November 2, 1867]

Apparently
assistant bridge tender John Gannon was off-duty during the early part of the
night and came to the bridge around midnight “somewhat the worse for the liquor
he had imbibed during his vacation.”Upon his arrival Edward Williams, the assistant on duty, who had “also
imbibed somewhat freely” jumped on him “in terms more forcible than elegant”
for reporting to work in a condition that would prevent him from responsibly
carrying out his duties.

Words were
exchanged, which quickly led to a “desperate struggle . . . in the little
bridge-house about which a number of persons . . . began to collect.”Mr. Williams, “being evidently the soberest
of the two,” grabbed hold of a club and knocked his opponent to the floor.Mr. Gannon did not stay down for long, and
the struggle continued.

At some point Mr.
Williams grabbed hold of an axe and “with this he dealt a crushing blow on his
adversary’s skull” which “more than sufficed to bring Gannon down.”Williams was just about to administer the
finishing blow when the head bridge-tender, Thomas Lewis, ran into the bridge house
and wrestled the lethal weapon out of his employee’s hands.The police arrived and Williams was hauled
off to the Armory.

Mr. Gannon was in a
pretty bad way, “covered with gore from his head to his feet, suffering from a “fearful
gash” to the back of his skull.The
bridge house was a mess with “the walls, the floor, the bed, and everything about
the place . . . thickly covered with blood.”Quite a night on
the river.Ending its report The Tribune observed, “Altogether, the
two constitute an exemplary pair of bridge-tenders, who ought to receive
promotion.”

Saturday, November 1, 2014

On January 27, 1927
the Chicago Tribune reported that
foundations were being sunk along the Chicago River at Chicago Avenue as the Wells
Brothers Construction company began the eight-story administrative building for
Montgomery Ward & Co.Although the
firm’s founder had been dead for 13 years, he had purchased the 160 foot by 320
foot lot at the same time that he bought the lot to the north where the
huge warehouse building at 600 West Chicago was constructed in 1908. For information on the 1908 building you can look here and here.

On this date,
November 1, in 1929 the new administrative building opened.It was a sleek building, designed by a the
construction department of Montgomery Ward under the supervision of chief
engineer Willis J. McCauley.As The Tribune described it, the building
would be “of modernistic architecture and feature “A heating plant fueled by
oil which will not send forth great clouds of smoke into Chicago’s skies.Fire escapes that are concealed within the
building, instead of sprawling over the walls.All roof paraphernalia inclosed and architecturally treated.”[Chicago
Tribune, October 27, 1929]

Art deco treatment of balconies in residential conversion (JWB Photo)

A retail store
filled the ground floor of the structure with clerical offices on the second
and third floors.A large cafeteria accommodated employees as well as shopper.The executive offices for the chain store and
retail store divisions were located on the fifth floor.The sixth floor was given over to the
merchandise-buying group while the seventh floor contained offices for the
catalog and general operating departments.The eighth floor was set aside for the firm’s top executives with
“walnut trimmed rooms, fireplaces, and the other perquisites of the ‘big
shots.’”The structure, financed by a
$2,000,000 bond issue, contained 450,000 square feet of floor space.

George Mulligan's Spirit of Progress (JWB Photo)

A feature of the
administrative center from its inception was a 12-story tower that would
feature a statue called The Spirit of Progress.There is some misinformation that is heard from time to time about this
stature, conceived by sculptor George Mulligan, that has it being moved to the
top of the building after its display as Cirrus at the 1933 and 1934 Century of
Progress World’s Fair.In fact, the
website of the architectural firm that renovated the building in 2005,
FitzGerald Associates Architects, claims this.

Another commonly
held opinion is that the statue came from Montgomery Ward’s building on
Michigan Avenue that was truncated by 13 stories and from which a weather vane in the form of a
female figure was removed in 1947 for safety reasons.

The statue, though,
was discussed in the 1927 Tribune
article, six years before the Century of Progress and 20 years before the
statue on Michigan Avenue was removed.

In the first decade
of the new millennium FitzGerald Associates Architects developed a plan to
convert the massive building into 241 condominiums with “luxurious penthouse
units constructed in the former mechanical penthouse that feature
nearly-unrivaled panoramic city views.” [www.fitzgeraldassociates.net] Two central light courts were created that
soared from the second floor to the roof, a plan that turned unusable interior
space into inward-facing units that even had their own balconies. The addition of the exterior balconies, railings
and window treatments on the arcaded river walk are understated art-deco
reminders of the fact that the original building rose in the heart of the art
deco era in Chicago.

Friday, October 31, 2014

The wind is
straight out of the north today with gusts close to 50 m.p.h.I just squeaked through Lake Shore Drive at
North Avenue a half-hour ago and the waves were beginning to break over the
concrete barriers separating the bike path from the highway.It looks like it’s going to be an interesting
afternoon in the Windy City.I’m
scheduled to give a 3:30 Chicago River tour, and I’m R-E-A-L-L-Y
looking forward to that!I wonder what
Nick Wollenda is thinking as he contemplates walking across the river on a
tightrope 60-some stories above the river . . .

The wind was
straight out of the south on this day, October 31, back in 1925 when the lake
freighter Calcite went aground in the river between the upraised Dearborn and
Clark Street bridges.The ship, launched
in 1912 and measuring 426 feet long and 54 feet wide, carried 6,000 tons of
crushed stone.When it went aground, it blocked
the river as well as all of the street traffic on Dearborn and Clark.

It was another
demonstration of the capricious nature of the Chicago River, a river that changed its moods with the winds and the tides.The wind on the day in question resulted in the depth of the river being
lower than it had been In years.Harbor
Master James M. Vandenberg said that if the wind did not change, it would be
necessary for the Chicago Sanitary District to shut off the current in the
river by closing the locks in Lockport in order to raise the depth of the channel enough to re-float the ship.[Chicago Tribune, November 1, 1925]

Calcite Wheelhouse

The Calcite
continued working for another 36 years after the incident and way finally
broken up for scrap in 1961.You can
still see part of the old freighter, though.The wheelhouse was saved and is now part of the 40 Mile Point
Lighthouse, a county park on the Presque Isle Peninsula of Michigan on the western shore of Lake Huron.

Thursday, October 30, 2014

Last night I was
fortunate enough to spend a couple of hours with some great folks, the owners
and crews of the First Lady fleet in Chicago and a number of ellow docents
who stand on the decks of those boats in good weather and bad, giving the
particulars of the great buildings that line the banks of the Chicago River.

The Leading Lady
locked though the entrance to the river and spent an hour or so on Lake
Michigan.It was a perfect night –
brisk, but not so cold that you couldn’t stand up on deck and nurse a Sam
Adams.The cloud cover reflected the
lights of the city, wrapping the downtown towers in a canopy of diffused light that did
not obscure the sharpness of the brilliantly lit city.

It was kind of
magic; it felt darned good to be where I was and where I am.

It’s a far
different place than it was in the old days, a hundred or more years ago when smoke belched from the chimneys of a thousand
buildings running on coal.Boilers
exploded with regularity, scalding, maiming and killing dozens.A hundred thousand
horses or more clopped over cobblestone streets, requiring a huge force of
street sweepers to tidy up after them each day.Scores of coal-fired freight and passenger trains moved within blocks of
the center of the city each day, whistles screaming and smokestacks belching
clouds of black smoke.And, of course,
there was the river, stinking in the summer, sluggish all year long, at times
running red into the lake as it carried the waste of the tanneries,
distilleries, packing houses, and gas companies that lined its banks.

On this date in
1902 the members of the City Council, unable to make a dent in all of the
chaos, drew the line at steamboat whistles.“Frantic blowing of discordant steamboat whistles is under the ban in
Chicago river.Tug captains and
commanders of vessels passing up and down the stream must, according to an
order from the city hall, make their bridge signals short and repeat them only
in case accident is impending.”[Chicago Tribune, October 31, 1902]

John McCarthy, the
city’s Harbor Master, along with his deputies, were given orders to arrest all
violators of the rule and charge them with disorderly contact.There was further talk of regulating the size
of the whistles that boats used.It wasn’t much,
but it was something.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

In his 1974 book
Mies van der Rohe at Work Peter Carter wrote of Farnsworth House in Plano,
Illinois:

The
tranquil pavilion of steel and glass, from which every seasonal change may be
observed, is poised above the ground and kept usually open to the
landscape.In its relationship to the
natural surroundings, there exists no suggestion of a contrived formal
composition;indeed, the building’s
occurrence in the landscape would seem almost fortuitous were it not for the
harmony which has been established between the architecture and the
terrain.Independent, yet at the same
time interdependent, this alliance between the organic and the inorganic
creates a convincing image for a technological era.

On this date,
October 29, back in 1951 everything was most definitely NOT tranquil at
Farnsworth House as it sat, uncompleted, while Mies van der Rohe, its
architect, and Dr. Edith Farnsworth, its eventual owner, fired lawsuits at one
another.

On July 13, 1951
Mies filed a mechanic’s lien foreclosure suit against Dr. Farnsworth for
nonpayment of fees.The doctor did not
pay.Instead, on October 29
she filed a counter-suit in the Kendall County Circuit Court, alleging that the
architect had by “fraud and deceit” led her into paying $33,872 more than the
original price upon which they had agreed in 1949.

Additionally, the
suit charged Mies van der Rohe with negligence in the handling of construction
plans and with being less than honest in his accounting of expenses on the
project. The suit sought an accounting of all expenses.

The verdict was
still out on the architectural value of the home at the time.The Chicago Tribune ended its article on the October lawsuit by
observing, “The Farnsworth house near Plano is reputed to be the only one of
its kind, and it has been visited by many of the world’s best known
architects.In reality, it is a
one-room, one story structure with flat roof and glass and steel outer walls,
constructed around an inner core containing kitchen, heating and sanitary
facilities.” [Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1951]

It took until the
first part of 1953 before the suit and counter-suits were heard before Master
in Chancery Jerome Nelson in Oswego.Mies van der Rohe’s attorney, John Faisler, presented his client as “an
expert in modern design, a teacher and director of architecture at the Illinois
Institute of Technology, and underpaid for his work.”

Mrs. Farnsworth was
represented by Attorney Randolph Bohrer, his son, Mason L. Bohrer, and State Senator
Merritt J. Little.(Can there be any more appropriate name for an Illinois state
senator?)Papa Bohrer asserted that Mies van der Rohe was not qualified as an architect and that “boosting of the original
cost estimate is attributable either to ‘gross incompetence or stupidity of the
plaintiff.’” [Chicago Tribune, January
31, 1953]The name-calling did not
end there as the attorney called Mies an “ordinary charlatan and an egoist of
the Buhaus school which has committed more frauds upon this country than any
other organization.”

Mies van der Rohe
ended up winning the lawsuit and collecting his fees.Dr. Farnswoth ended up living in the glass
house for another 20 years.The two
never spoke to one another again.

The affair did considerable
damage to the architect’s reputation.In
a scathing critique of the home in 1953 House
Beautiful magazine observed –

Does it work?
The much touted all-glass cube of International Style architecture is perhaps
the most unlivable type of home for man since he descended from the tree and
entered a cave. You burn up in the summer and freeze in the winter, because
nothing must interfere with the “pure” form of their rectangles—no overhanging
roofs to shade you from the sun; the bare minimum of gadgets and possessions so
as not to spoil the “clean” look; three or four pieces of furniture placed
along arbitrary pre-ordained lines; room for only a few books and one painting
at precise and permanent points; no children, no dogs, extremely meager kitchen
facilities—nothing human that might disturb the architect’s composition. [https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/moma_learning/docs/CL_5.pdf]

Despite the
lawsuits and the acrimony the 2,215 square foot house in Plano has stood the
test of time and the ravages of nature.It is now viewed as one of the great triumphs of Mies van der Rohe’s
career, more or less.